Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving seemed to come amazingly fast this year.  It just flew by.  We celebrated a day late because of my husband's work schedule but it was a nice dinner just the same.  I was worried that I'd spend a lot of time in the kitchen and be tired and stressed about it.  But for some reason this year it was relatively easy to prep and cook everything.

  

The girls loved just about everything except the green beans were a little too crunchy for them.  D loved the mashed potato, sweet potato and pumpkin dish and kept asking for more.  I cooked it in the slow cooker and it was so easy and laid back to do and tasted great. 

We needed something to eat for lunch on the day we cooked so Kevin made our usually pumpkin fried rice dish early in the day.  He added a few more vegetables and some Chinese sausage to round out the dish as a meal and it still tasted delicious as a Thanksgiving side dish. 

We brined the turkey for two days this year because that was how it worked out between shopping for it and lack of fridge space.  It was juicy and tender but not more so than other years that we've done it for only 24 hours.  The turkey had a lot of extra fat on it, so next year we are thinking of trying a free-range bird instead.  I made the orange cranberry relish a day in advance so the flavors would get a chance to really blend.  Next year though I should do two bags of cranberries.  There is just never enough to last through all of the turkey leftovers.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went and got our Christmas picture taken so I can get going on hopefully sending out all of the Christmas cards on time this year.  We really only had one smile the whole photo shoot from my serious little girls.  Miss T picked a good picture to do it in though.

Today is the day we traditionally start putting out Christmas decorations.  I'm thinking of at least switching out the fall wreath but I probably won't do much more until December.